Saturday, January 9, 2010

D90 as a lomo camera

When boredom attacks, I always end up doing unexpected things. Lately, I've been hanging out with friends doing absolutely nothing. Obviously I got bored, picked up my camera and experimented. I wanted to come up with photos looking like they were taken using a lomo camera... Over saturated, high in contrast, having psychedelic colors and looking as if they were taken not following the traditional rules (perfect exposure, well composed, etc etc).

THE COLORS
I am no expert with picture control settings of my camera so i just decided mess up with it. After experimenting and a few test shots... I came up with these setttings...

VIVID
sharpening 5
contrast +3
brightness +1
saturation +2 (or it really depends on how saturated you want your photos to be)
hue - 3

WB (if gonna be used in daylight or with a flash) 2940K
G-M G5
A-B A4

THE EXPOSURE
As for the exposure, I wanted the ambient lights to affect the final photo so i followed my usual work flow when dealing with flash and ambient light (I've learned this from the Nikon website)... first, use the camera mode in auto mode to come up with the right exposure so that the ambient lights will end up showing in/ affecting the photo, then use the settings given by the auto mode in manual mode and use my flash, off-camera, to light up the subject. also, the zoom setting of my flash was 85mm so that it had that "spot light" feel. The flash power? well it really depends on you. but I think over exposing the subject looked nice.

MULTI EXPOSURE
Since d90 also has this multi exposure feature, I decided to use it to come up with multi-exposed lomo-looking photos.

VIGNETTE
The vignette.... we were taught back in my college photography class how to manually give photos those soft black corners. Either, burn and dodge the photo when developing it in the darkroom or just cut a piece of black paper and tape it at the end of your lens hood (you're basically extending your lens hood until you see black edges when you looked through the viewfinder). I did the latter, of course.

Anyway what's important if you want to able to take photos like these, you just have to remember the keywords... experiment, play and have fun.

enough said.. here are the photos....





no photoshop editing =)
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Friday, January 8, 2010

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Frances Karla Paderna




dresses by John Paras, Katie Pineda and Tracey Tabora
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Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Friday, December 11, 2009

Portraits

portraits of friends I took these past few days




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Monday, December 7, 2009

Nagsasa - HDR

Click images to zoom in






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Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Pure Sores


Last weekend, I joined my cousin, Mina, on a trip to Anangawin, Zambales with her husband, Jake and a couple of friends. The night before the said trip, I stayed in Jake and Mina's place in paranaque. We left early, I think around 5am, to avoid heavy traffic in North Luzon Expressway.


To reach Anawangin, one must take a 30 minute boat ride from Baranggay Pandaquit to Anawangin beach but if you prefer to experience more adventure, you can choose trekking instead. it'll take approximately 4 hours to get there. The boats there are a bit small. A boat can accomodate 5 persons, including the bangkero and his assistant but since my cousin and her husband have a contact there, we were able to rent a bigger boat which can accomodate 6 to 8 persons.


Anawangin beach has pine trees instead of coconut trees which makes it different from other beaches here in Pinas. There are no hotels and resorts (the loo? just a toilet bowl covered by sawali) and no electricity, just pure outdoor experience. Unfortunately, after a 3 hour drive going to Pandaquit from Paranaque, we've learned from our bangkero (the boat guy who took us to the beach) that a lot of people were going to Anawangin for the weekend so we decided to go to Nagsasa Cove instead. Nagsasa Cove, which is an hour away from the Pandaquit, is much like Anawangin but it has a longer stretch of beach and a waterfall (30 minute hike from the beach).


We did things in Nagsasa any camper group would do in Anangawin... put up tents, cook, swim, trek around the place and of course, take a lot of photos. Being a first time camper, it was kinda hard for me to adjust with the idea of going back to basics (especially their idea of the loo back there), well almost... but i must say that the place is simply divine! Here are some photos and snapshots ...



Nagsasa


The size of the boats


Our camp site


Mina and Jake


Jake taking photos


Where the river meets the ocean


Our camp site at night


The girls preparing our dinner


The long walk to Nagsasa falls...




Mang Pepe, guiding us to Nagsasa falls




i enjoyed swimming (practicing things i learned from my SOLAS training... hehe) and taking photos a lot of photos out in the open sun... well... spell sunburn. Now I'm experiencing "pure sores." My skin hurts like hell. But it's worth it naman.


I also took a few shots for HDR processing... will post them as soon as i finish post processing the photos.

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Love, Fashion and Everything in Between


' helped Anton in layouting his blog last night... Click here to view full entry...

blah blah blah


been terribly busy these past few weeks. not with work or something but traveling back and forth Manila and Santa Rosa, Laguna, my hometown, catching up and spending more time with my family and photo-hungry close friends. I'm surely gonna miss these camera whores when I leave 'Pinas...






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